Author: Eric Bakker

Hi there, Eric Bakker, naturopath, author of Candida Crusher.

I’m here to talk to you today about the fifth Candida crushing food, the allium family, in particular, brown onion. Brown onions or red onions are quite similar. Brown onions are a bit stronger. So brown onions we call Allium cepa and garlic we call Allium sativum.

So I’m going to talk a little bit about a study that was conducted at the University of Tehran in 2006 where they compared water extractions of allium cepa and allium sativum, so onion and garlic, against 19 different strains of Candida albicans and about 12 different Candida species in general, including 35 different types of dairy defined species. So these are various species of yeast that infect hair, nails and skin, different parts of the body.

So what they did is they prepared these little agar dishes of these little, you know, growing medium in a laboratory. And they would have all these different species of yeast growing there on these plates and then introducing to those plates water solutions of garlic and onion to see what the activity was like. And they were stunned to see how powerful both onion and garlic were when it came to reducing the populations of yeasts. And, in fact, what they found in some respects the activity was even more powerful against strains which are resistant to Fluconazole and particular pharmaceutical drugs.

So the point I’m making here is it makes a heck of a lot of sense for you to incorporate onion into your diet, very small amounts of raw onion, raw red onions, raw brown onions, spring onions, you know, the shallots or scallions, the green things. Cut them up and add them to your salad. Get some red onions and cut it really fine and add it to salads. Add it to different types of dishes. So raw onions are extremely powerful and have been used for thousands of years by many different people around the world.

Egyptians used onions going back a long time ago. It is said even when the pyramids were built, garlic and onions were actually traded for labor. And these foods also are very high in sulphur, which is an important compound required for detoxification. So your liver, in particular, has got a high infinity for sulphur for cleansing and purifying the body. Sulphur has been used for a long time. And here in New Zealand, we’ve got these sulphur baths, you know, the hot water that comes out of the ground in thermal activity is high in sulphur, which has a very deeply purifying and cleansing effect on the body.

So now why should you incorporate the allium family into your diet? Well, think about it. Antifungal activity, cleansing activity, purification, cheap, it’s something you should really consider doing. So instead of rushing off and buying the latest, greatest pill or taking drugs which can develop resistance against fungi, you can eat foods which are grown and available at your grocery store or supermarket, which have an anti-fungal activity. Make sense? Makes a lot of sense to me.

So I hope that answers your questions about the allium family and anti-fungal activity. Thank you.

Hi there, Eric Bakker, naturopath.

Going to talk to you today about another Candida crushing food. This is number four, coconut. Coconut has really become very popular in the last several years as an anti-fungal, even as a weight loss aid. Let’s just talk a little bit about coconut and some of the health benefits you can derive from this amazing food.

The coconut tree has been called the “tree of life”, and we can see why because just about every part of the coconut is really being used. The leaves, when we look at the nut, the copra or the meat inside, the cream, the oil, the husk, everything’s used. Coconut is an incredibly nutritious food. And when we look at the oil or the cream, the fat of it, a lot of people seem to think it’s bad for the heart; that it contains saturated fats that go hard at room temperature and I’m going to get heart attacks from this. A lot of my doctor friends think it’s stupid to have coconut products because of heart disease.

What a line of bologna! It’s all ignorance. Coconut’s been consumed for thousands of years by many, many people around the world, particularly the tropical peoples who never had heart disease until white men came with cigarettes and alcohol and deep-fried chips and crap like that.

What makes coconut so beneficial and why should you incorporate it into your diet if you’ve got a yeast infection? Coconut contains a lot of what we call MCT or medium chain triglycerides. These are particular fats with particular elongated fatty acid chains. They’re not polyunsaturated. They’re what we call medium chained. These are, in fact, not bad for the heart at all. And, in fact, if you look at cardiovascular, they’re actually going to decrease your risk of heart disease, but they’re anti-fungal. And they’re anti-fungal because of the three principle medium chains, Lauric acid, Caprylic acid and Capric acid. They help to work and weaken and slowly erode the cell wall of the yeast exposing the cytoplasm or the internal part of the yeast, which the immune system can then attack. They weaken the cell.

I like people to incorporate particularly coconut oil into their diet. Coconut oil contains up to seven times more Caprylic acid than coconut cream does. It makes a lot of sense to add this to the diet. Coconut oil and fresh garlic are my two favorite Candida crushing foods to incorporate into the diet. I’d like you to seriously consider having this in your diet on a regular basis. Start with small amounts. Don’t obviously drink a half a cup of coconut oil every day and get sick on it. Start with small amounts like a teaspoon and then build up gradually to a tablespoon per day. You can incorporate it in cooking. You can incorporate it in all sorts of different foods like drinks and smoothies and things like that.

The other thing I like about coconut oil is it doesn’t have to be digested by way of pancreatic enzymes like animal fats do. Once it gets into the small intestine, it can be easily incorporated into the lymph tissue and go into the circulation and bypass regular digestion, which is really good for people who’ve got liver issues and they’ve lost their gall bladder, things like that. I’ve known women in my clinic who’ve come back and said, “Eric, I can tolerate coconut oil. I’ve had my gall bladder out and I’ve got liver problems, but coconut’s not a problem.”

Be careful with die off. I do get reports of people when I recommend to take coconut that they go out and have a cupful of coconut oil a day. Start slowly and like any yeast-inhibiting food, just gradually build up. Let’s see how you go on that.

I hope you take that recommendation onboard and incorporate some coconut oil into your diet. Make sure that you’re going to get a cold pressed, high grade, organic coconut oil, too, not something that’s been heated up. A health food shop will help you out there.

And also if you’re going to get a dietary supplement, anti-fungal again, get one with Caprylic acid in it. And as we spoke about, an oregano supplement, which has got the carvacrol in it, a clove supplement that’s got the Eugenol in it, and a garlic supplement, which has got the allicin in it. These are all clever things to have incorporated into an anti-fungal product. These are all the best things you can include.

Next video we’ll be talking about the allium containing foods. Thank you.

Hi there, Eric Bakker, naturopath, author of Candida Crusher.

I’m here to do a video about clove. Clove is going to be the number three Candida crushing food; a thing you can incorporate into your diet. So let’s talk a little bit about clove.

You may be familiar with clove. Clove is a very aromatic spice and it’s often found in the very hot tropical sort of regions. It’s grown and harvested in a couple of smaller areas. It’s harvested, really, there’s an island group called the Maluku Islands in Indonesia where it’s primarily harvested. Also in Zanzibar, Tanzania, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, there are many other countries where clove plantations are grown. So clove has been used now for many hundreds of years, and particularly in Holland where I grew up. Clove has been used really since the 1600s when the Dutch with their East Indian Trading Company would bring lots of spices back from Indonesia, so it’s been incorporated into Dutch food for quite a long time.

What are the virtues of clove? Why is it so good? Well, let’s have a look at some researcher’s study that was conducted on clove. And if we have a look at 1999 in India, a study was conducted where they compared clove, garlic and various pharmaceutical anti-fungal agents, and what they found was quite interesting. They found that garlic; in particular, within one hour of incorporation into a petri dish with bacteria like various staph and strep bacteria, and even salmonella, within one hour the garlic would kill and wipe out these things. Clove took a little bit longer. Clove took about four to five hours to wipe these things out, but it was just as powerful as garlic.

The things I like about clove is it’s cheap, readily available, and even the commercially bought stuff in a supermarket; even if you buy dry clove like this, it’s going to have a good activity. Clove contains an essential oil called Eugenol. You may be familiar with clove with a toothache. If you put a drop of clove oil on a cotton bat on a tooth, it’s going to help the pain considerably. That’s a good tip for you so you can use it for that. It’s a nice spice that people use in baking cookies and things like that. But when it comes to fungus, it’s amazing.

They did a study in Portugal in 2009 and what they found was Eugenol was effective against all fungal strains, so even Fluconazole-resistant fungal strains. But furthermore, it actually stopped Candida from growing the hyphae or the little legs or tendrils it can do in the intestine, which can penetrate the small bowel wall and create leaky gut. It actually stops the hyphae. This needs to be seriously thought of as an anti-fungal agent. If you get an anti-fungal supplement, make sure there’s clove in it. It’s very powerful to use.

I had a case of a guy about a year or two ago now with very bad jock itch, and I said, “Why don’t you try clove tea?” So he got a teaspoon of cloves and a cup of boiling water and made a strong tea and applied this to the groin a few times per day, and the results were staggering. I was absolutely amazed.

Clove should not be used in any concentration stronger than one percent if you’re using the oil. If you’re going to use the oil, one drop of clove oil in maybe a large tablespoon of olive oil is good to use. You can mix this in. You can even try tampon treatments with clove oil incorporated like that for vaginal thrush.

Clove oil is very strong. You need to take a lot of caution with clove oil, even more so than with oregano oil, around the eyes and the genitals. You would never use the oil straight anywhere on the body, but you can use a drop of it on a bat in your mouth on a tooth. Don’t swallow it. Clove oil is a petatoxin(sp?) so it can create liver toxicity. You don’t need to swallow clove oil. You just use it sparingly and use the tea. It also sooths gastrointestinal distress, nausea, it’s an analgesic for pain, it’s anti-fungal, anti-bacterial; it has 101 uses.

Seriously consider clove and you can read a lot more about clove in Candida Crusher in Chapter 7 in Section 4 under the Special Foods.